Perfect Offerings
by Riesx
Summary: What are presents to a man who escapes death every year? Dean has had some very memorable birthdays.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I own no Supernatural characters, but play with them for my own amusement. There is one O/C here that does belong to me.**

**Rating: M for language and some adult situation(s)**

**Spoilers: The whole series and some times before it starts**

**A/N: Yes, I am continuing "Darkness, Be My Light" and I thank all you readers for going back to it. Unfortunately, I'm trying to make it as perfect as possible and that it turning into a real be-atch. There will most likely be a new chapter or two in a week. Until then, I offer you this...**

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><p>Ring the bells that still can ring<br>Forget your perfect offering.  
>There is a crack in everything.<br>That's how the light gets in.

** -Leonard Cohen (Anthem)**

* * *

><p><strong>((1997))<strong>

It's strange, but Dean has never possessed anything all his own. Excluding knives and his gun, of course.

Dad's brown leather jacket has just always fit him perfectly and he borrows it whenever the old man forgets it exists. After a couple of years of constant wear, he's gotten the elbows broken in just right. Neither of them can remember where it came from. If Dean digs into the deep barrel of his earliest memories he thinks it's been around at least since Mom was still alive. Thrown carelessly over the back of a kitchen chair, hanging from the front hall coat rack, stuffed in some random closet….it's pretty much the only thing they owned that escaped from the fire that long ago night.

Three lives, an old car and a unquenchable thirst for vengeance…If Dean knew his future then at four years old, he might never have stopped running. Just taken his baby brother and fled down that pavement with all of Hell nipping at his heels. In some ways, they've always been carrying each other.

So Dean has decided that at the ripe old age of eighteen, he deserves a decent thing. They've never really celebrated birthdays in this messed up family. It's pretty much been an unspoken tradition that, if they're not killing things, Dad gets drunk and passes out in front of the TV in whatever dump they can afford. He forgets important dates and disregards his son's feelings sometimes, but fourteen years of hunting have whittled John Winchester down to the bone.

No one gets gifts in this family.

Okay, maybe the hokey, kind of cool amulet Sammy gave to him for Christmas one year counts. But that had been Uncle Bobby's before Dad's and then it was his brother's. Dean sometimes feels as if all his life has been had-me-downs.

He'll take it, though. Especially when he catches Dad staring at him from the corner of his eye. John won't admit it out loud, but his eldest son has inherited his late mother's looks. All the way down to the intense blue-green eyes and position of every freckle. Same expressions. Same confident posture. Same understated elegance of movement.

Dean will always remind his father of ghosts he can't escape.

Some presents you accept. Some you never ask for,

But receive anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

**((2000))**

What's the difference between a hunter and a regular person?

A hunter always runs toward the screams.

The night of Dean Winchester's twenty-first birthday finds him in the diviest dive bar in South Boston pulling an all night drunk that he hopes won't be back to haunt him come morning. He's been snagging illicit beers from Dad's stash for the last few years and has had a few fake I.D.'s made since then, but there's just something about one's first legal drink that can't be duplicated.

He really had no definite plans for his birthday, just to get away from his screwed up family. Maybe run away for a little while and feel things out for his own. Hell, Sammy even did the same thing not too long ago. Came back downtrodden and ashamed, but with a new secretive look in his eyes that Dean has never asked about.

He wants to understand.

Dean's had enough of this place, though, to realize he doesn't particularly like big towns. Too many snobby college kids with too many weird accents. He speaks Latin, Enochian, some Farsi, even bits of Helltong but this kind of English just makes no sense whatsoever.

"Happy Birthday to me, though!" Dean holds up the napkin that busty, brunette Kara and her best friend Sara (their names even rhyme. Must be kismet…) scribbled their numbers on so he can read it in the streetlight and make a call to Threesomes-R-Us. "Maybe this place won't be a total bust."

That's when the loudest screech Dean has ever heard in his life echoes down the near abandoned avenue and he is instantly sober and disappointed.

Hunters generally run towards the danger.

It lives in the blood. A habit of knowing just what might occur if you answer the call and the weighing of if you can live with yourself when you don't.

So, Dean sighs deeply, checks his belt for knife and Colt and races as fast as he can into the darkest, foggiest alley he has ever had the misfortune of entering. He can't see one foot in front of his own face, but almost suffocates on the combined fumes of sulfur and a sort of musky incense. Something moves from his right to land a punch square on his cheekbone.

"What the fuck? What-" He's interrupted by a small clearing of the mists and the scene in front of him throws his semi-lucid mind for a loop.

Four shambling, shabbily dressed men are being tossed around by some smallish girl, who's kicking and punching like a whirling dervish of leather and combat boots hopped up on PCP. One of the men is missing an arm and Dean finds it clawing around at his feet, attempting to return to its body without eyes for guidance. "I'm getting bitch slapped by zombies? _Really_?"

The girl hears him and yells back at him over the unceasing screeching of the animated corpses. "Sorry, that was me! Fucking Vodun!" She doesn't turn around, the fog thickens again and Dean makes up his mind to see her face after the fighting is done.

_This has got to be the coolest chick I've ever met. Possibly excluding Lisa and last year's Bendiest Weekend Ever._

His reverie is cut short as another torn limb is tossed his way and Dean joins the fray, concentrating on the task at hand. He's never fought with another hunter like this, in the dark and half-drunk on cheap liquor and heightened adrenaline. Every so often he catches a flash of silver from the girl's dark hair and the faint ringing of bells emanates from all directions at once. They fall into an easy grace, dodging each other without thought, the rhythm of the fight a natural single heartbeat. Punches flow into sharp elbows. Silver knives slice un-dead flesh to shreds.

Grunts and battle cries fade as Dean suddenly realizes that all the zombies are down and most of their bodies have been melting away into the un-even cobblestones. The fog rolls in again thicker than before, along with some more misty rain, sinking into Deans bones. He feels wearier than he ever has in his life. Maybe it wasn't wise to take this situation on after six beers and a few tequila shots, but something screwy always happens on his birthday and 'really awesome scrapping' is second on his favorite things list under 'ménage a trios'.

Mystery girl is kneeling over one of the prone bodies and now that Dean can get a clearer look, albeit from the back, he see that she has about a dozen silver charms weaved into her long dark hair and sports possibly the choicest black leather jacket he's seen, outside of his own. She clutches a weird amulet sinking into the goop that was previously a human being and speaks for the first time in what seems like forever.

"I knew it! They've been eating and re-animating. Good thing you carry silver. You a hunter?"

Accent is slightly southern with a foreign tinge. So **not** a local. Point one in her favor. She still doesn't look at him directly and Dean finds he's irritated by this. The least she owes him is a thank you or a freakin' smile or something. "Yeah, for awhile. You?"

"Something like that." She tucks the amulet into her pocket and half-way turns in his direction before being distracted by some distant noise that Dean can barely make out. _Also has super sonic hearing. What __**is**__ this chick?_

He has too many questions by far and she doesn't seem inclined to answer them any time soon. Lighting quick she unsheathes a wickedly curved knife and Dean reaches for his own, remembering that he's pretty sure she was cutting through the small swath with a short sword moments ago. _How many weapons can she carry at one time? Where did they all go? _

A tall, caped man (_Really? Who wears a cape? A **wizard**_?) slowly emerges from the depths of the opposite alley entrance, walking casually towards them with a sneer aimed directly for the hunters. The fog parts as he nears and the girl curses in a language Dean has never recognized. "I'll handle the Botono."

And then she's up and running, faster than Dean has even seen anyone or thing move. He wants nothing more than to chase after her and help or _anything, _but the darkness presses back in as soon as she leaves and he's blind again. Apparently all of Tiny's silver was glowing bright blue witch light, illuminating them in a constant hazy nimbus. _No wonder everything seemed so dreamlike._

Even through his exhaustion, Dean calls out in the direction she vanished. "You're welcome! Nice to have met you!" He lays on the dewy ground, quite forgetting the puddles of slime all around. He'll rise and find the way back to the Impala soon enough, but for right now, it's the last thing on his mind.

A lone ebon feather comes to cling to his shirtsleeve and he notices its color eerily reflects that of weird girl's hair. Dean goes to toss it on the air, when it releases a high chime and small static shock. The thick scent of jasmine emanates from his collar and a silver charm falls right into his hand as if summoned. It's a strange symbol he's never seen. Something for Bobby to research. If he ever makes his way back to South Dakota. He stuffs both objects in his pocket and decides that some mysteries are better left unsolved.

The previously prized napkin is lost to him. He won't search for it, either.

This birthday is never going to top his 'Best Of' list, but Dean believes he has just made a new friend.

He'll need those for all the lightless nights ahead.


	3. Chapter 3

**((2002))**

The Impala is his.

It has a deed, but his name's not on it. She totally belongs to him, though.

Ever since Dad began tooling around in that black monstrosity of a truck they found rusting towards the back of Singer Salvage Yard, Dean has known the car has become his property. She's been the brother's inheritance for so many years (_mostly Dean's, though_), if not in print, then at least in spirit.

Today, Dean can't drive away from the road-side motel fast enough. The yelling of John and Sam Winchester is bound to wake the whole town with its fury and he refuses to take any part. At some point in their arguments, they each turn to Dean to take a side and he's sick to death of it.

All his life he's been protecting one of them from the other.

This baby's been his solace for eighteen years, ever since they left Kansas and he taught himself to drive at twelve. He grips the steering wheel with white-knuckled fists and wonders how far they've actually come since then.

Not fucking far enough.

Sammy went against their father's wishes and applied to colleges. He was accepted into all of them. _Smart little fucker, I'm so proud of you_….That's all Dean managed to say before Dad got all half-drunk and wound up.

He's never been afraid they'll come to blows, but if they do, Sam's had a recent growth spurt and the advantage of soberness. Dean knows it just has to be argued out, but that doesn't mean he'll stick around to watch.

The Impala's engine purrs as he urges the speedometer to ten mph over the posted limit. Going around the next sharp curve he might lose control and incinerate them both, but this road seems to flatten the further he goes. Dean would drive straight into the full white moon if it came close enough.

An hour later he has doubled back and parked in the sad motel lot, despite his better instincts to never return. John is outside, leaning against the wall with crossed arms and Dean wonders how he'll handle him with Sammy gone. Four years (maybe longer…It _is_ Law School) suddenly seem like a very long time.

He's never been able to decipher his dad's expressions, so he reluctantly exits the car and makes to pass and enter the room as nothing has happened and no one has disappeared for over two hours. Certainly not him.

"He left us, Dean." John won't look him in the eye and he glances from the Impala to the Monster Truck and down again. "Packed a bag and took the bus. Said to give you this."

He hands his son (_the good one? the clone of Mom? What __**is**__ he anymore…?_) a cassette tape. 'Happy 22nd Year' is written on one side. 'Kick It In the Ass' on the flip. Well, at least **someone** remembered.

Dean curses under his breath and looks around, searches for something he feels is lost for good, takes it all in….A world without his brother and the sun going down.

The universe bleached and lonely.

He's been holding the car keys so tightly, they've carved a temporary tattoo into his palm. At least one of them has taken a chance for a better life. Dean would chose to kill every evil fucking thing on the planet if it meant Sammy could live normally.

So he'll embrace this fucked up road.

He'll race down every monster in the last friend he has.

_Oh, yeah, they'll have to pry my baby out of cold, dead hands. This is __**mine**_.

Cake and candles are overrated anyway.


	4. Chapter 4

**((2006))**

Dean gauges the attractiveness of most women on the amount of air that leaves the room when they enter. Layla has managed to make him feel smothered every time she gets close. So…beautiful. But dangerous. Way too _pious_ for his liking. He won't knock the classy chicks, but there's something about a self-righteous attitude that brings out the smartass in him.

Before he even gets off a parting remark, she's pressing a small object into his hand. "It's a gift. So you don't forget." She leaves as softly as she came in to say goodbye, her small smile tucked away in Dean's mind for all time.

What do you get someone who has just told Death to suck it?

And if you're the one who can't escape an inevitable fate, why are you _giving_ instead of _receiving_?

Layla claims she's made her peace with God and her lot, but somewhere deep down, Dean can't quite bring himself to believe it. Ever since they met, she's been full of a quiet vitality and he can't see her giving up so easily. She might be okay with it, but _he_ never will be.

You don't just leave a mark on someone and expect them to _forget. _Of course he won't. Maybe that's why, even thought he doesn't really know how, Dean promises to pray for her. He'll pray she doesn't suffer and that the end comes as fast as she needs it to.

Besides a bit of faith, she's given him a small cross. He thinks it's made of silver, but it makes no difference. Dean's owned several crosses, many kinds, even carried around his mental ones long enough to know what a broken back feels like. This cross makes him feel lighter somehow. Maybe it's absorbed the manner in which it was given.

At least someone out there is praying for him. His soul.

Other than his life,

it's the best present he's gotten all year_._


	5. Chapter 5

**((2008))**

"All I wanted this year, Sammy, was a beer with my burger. _How_ is that too much for a man to ask?"

Noon on a Friday afternoon finds the Brothers Winchester enjoying a casual lunch in a rural roadside diner. It could be any number of anonymous restaurants they stop at on their way through any number of anonymous towns, searching for food and a short rest before continuing on what has begun to seem like the Eternal Roadtrip Through Hades.

Sam wants to ignore Dean's extremely loud outburst, which seems to have drawn the attention of every diner and employee to them, but his older brother would just get crankier and the scene would deteriorate from there. Dean knows Sam gets embarrassed easily, especially around strangers, so he's amping things up just for kicks. He traded his soul for the kid, is looking at only a few more months to live and it **is** his damn birthday, after all. Dean can't help but revel in Sam's distress and wonders if he's about to hide under the table. Under the cook's greasy apron would be pretty funny too.

"We **are** in the Bible Belt, Dean."

"Yeah, how'd we take a wrong turn into Alabama, anyway?" Dean nods and gives a little wave to a couple of greasy overall wearing rednecks who having been glaring at them since they sat down.

Sam tries to curl up into himself, but Dean figures that'll be damn near impossible with the way he's been sprouting up and out like a Magic Beanstalk lately. He pokes at the limp piece of lettuce that came on his burger (_vegetables on charbroiled meat is just plain sacrilege!_..) and lowers his voice to its normal low tone. "Mark my words, Sammy. I will not leave satisfied if they don't have pie!"

"Of course we have pie, Silly!" The middle aged waitress manages to silently sneak up behind Sam, making him jump almost a foot in the air and simultaneously reach for the gun he forgot he left in the Impala. Of course, Dean gets a pretty good chuckle out of it.

"I shall have a huge slice of apple," he indicates that he will be capable of eating half a pie, "and my dear companion will have none. Thanks, Sweetheart."

"My pleasure, Pumpkin." She responds as if it's anything but and clears their table of dirty dishes.

Sam sighs deeply, running a hand through his hair. "I think it might be the best idea **ever** if we just hit the road, Dean. I'm partially psychic, remember? I get the feeling we've outstayed our welcome. _Why do you always have to order pie_?"

"Good pie is equal parts sugar, fruit and crack. Great pie," and here Dean pauses to emphasize and point his fork at Sam. "is a Plethora. Of. Awesome. It's my special day and I demand it."

"Plethora? When did you start to learn big words?" Sam chuckles good naturedly and tucks back into his salad. Dean always feels gluttonous next to his brother. He can stretch a meal out to Judgement Day. Sam can barely hear Dean mumble something that sounds like, "Word a day calendar."

Sam crumples up his napkin and rises. "Going to the men's room." He stretches up to his full staggering height, giving all their potential attackers something extra to think about. Then Sammy suprizes his older brother with a pat on the arm and light kiss on the lips. "Happy Birthday, Asshat." And sporting the widest, goofiest grin Dean has ever seen on his face, he walks to the back restrooms.

They've never been the touchiest family in the world (especially not like _that_), so Dean is confused for a second. It all becomes clear to him as the glares and scowls and angry auras in the room multiply ten-fold.

Sam has just given him the second best gift for his (_probably the last one ever_) birthday.

The potential for a really good fight.

Dean will most likely miss out on the beer at lunch today.

That's okay, though.

Hell doesn't seem too bad a future with a brother's smile in his heart.


	6. Chapter 6

**((2010))**

He would start tonight over from the beginning if he could.

Not that there's anything in need of change. Fact is, if he could loop the whole thing into a never ending spiral of memory and live there…. that would be just about _perfect_.

Dean's been dealing with Castiel's unannounced comings and goings for over a year now. All the naïve questions he asks and how close he always stands. Dean always feels the air thicken and the electricity of a hundred electric storms jolt through any area before the angel appears. He always hides jangled nerves and some strange form of anticipation behind smart-ass comments and snarls, but Cas owns a laser beam focus that leaves him burning. He's tried to deny it (slight irritation, some confusion, the _longing_…), but a determined angel is a hard thing to dodge.

"I believe it is your day of birth, Dean." Castiel fixates on Dean and won't stop nearing him until their faces are barely an inch apart. "I have come to help you celebrate."

Dean can't speak, can't hardly breathe and absolutely no part of him (no atom, no cell, no neutron) wants to move away. Castiel doesn't wait for him to react and he doesn't know when the kiss begins.

He does know it's different from anything he's felt before and he doesn't care if it never ends.

How do you know something's not a dream? Can you ever wake up from reality?

Dean was taught many things during his tenure in Hell. He knows, although was never able to apply the knowledge, terrible exacting ways to tear an angel apart.

Like love slowly transforming to hate, you start from the inside out.

Angels are notoriously difficult creatures to catch, yet here is one laying contentedly in his embrace. Dean traces the lines of wiry arm muscles down to slender fingertips and wonders how a thing so strong can also feel so soft. Castiel mumbles sleepy nonsense against his neck, cuddles a bit closer and Dean tries very hard not to fall apart. This is a rare peaceful moment in his life and he is determined to memorize every moment. He doesn't want to sleep, not a wink.

Dean will quietly file this time away for the future. For some time when he will undoubtedly have need for goodness to recall, banking against the overwhelming dark. He holds his soul mate tight, breathes in the smoky scent of his hair, revels in the silk of his skin. Some part of him prays they are already in their reserved Heaven. The darkest piece of his soul knows they are not. So Dean silently makes the only promises he can:

_I want to stay here. With you. Like this. Always. Think we can manage that? Even if I die again a thousand times over. Every moment. Every second. Every conceivable way. If the Powers That Be erase all these memories, I'll stop being me. You've started to define me and I won't exist without you. Jimmy…Castiel…Deliverer from Perdition._

_Shit, when did I become a girl? Including fucking guys. Okay, just one guy exclusively, but __**still**__…._

He has danced with the devil, thrown down with scores of demon kind and apprenticed under the evilest sons of bitches Hell has on offer. Dean's been shown a thousand methods to make an angel suffer.

What an irony that this one has discovered a single way to flay him down to the soul.

He sighs, slows his breathing to match Cas' and sleep finally begins to claim him as victim. He hopes he escapes nightmares of the torture chamber. Maybe God won't be so cruel tonight.

Dean Winchester knows this might be his final year of total respite, but he is so very weary of a life full of stark contrasts.

Giving and taking. Sorrow and ecstasy. Heaven and Hell.

Blood and wings….


End file.
